Tarpan

1994 140’ col Hindi d/co-sc K. Bikram Singh pc NFDC co-sc Neelabh c Venu m Rajat Dholakia lp Om Puri, Revathi, Manohar Singh, Meeta

Ex-bureaucrat Bikram Singh’s debut feature is an invented folk legend set in Shekhawati, Rajasthan. When a couple finds their daughter terminally ill, a soothsayer directs them to a distant village where no girls live beyond the age of seven. The cure is to be found in the cleaning of an ancient well, which in turn uncovers numerous past crimes which have to be repented and exorcised before the curse can be lifted. Both the script and camerawork are relentlessly exoticised in the effort to make an orientalist fantasy about superstition.

Film